Hey crow, I have a question of curiosity. Did you have a view similar to mine when you were in your early twenties? The way you word your replies seems to suggest it.

In my 20s I knew not very much about life. But no, I didn't hold your view, because the whole idea of spiritual mysticism enthralled and engaged me. I didn't know, and had no way of knowing, if any of it was true, but at no point did I ever consider it to be crap. Thus I embarked upon a lifetime of exploration, to discover the truth of it.

I hope to save a few potentials from the myriad blind alleys and dead ends I had to explore, before finding the truth. Soul is real. God is real. Enlightenment is real. Heaven on earth is real. Heaven after death is real. It's all real.

The rest of your post is about silly things that are traps for human thought.

Dont buy it, seems like just ignoring the whole thing. Why is it a trap? So you can be focused on everything except this?

I mean... yeah. The point is to focus on everything or anything that isn't a dead-end for thought. Isn't that usually the way we figure is the best? In any situation?

It's not throwing up your hands and giving up when you run into a logical spiral (or an infinite regress) like "what is life?" or "why do I exist?" or "who am I?"

Those might be amusing questions for some but they are only bothersome if you want them to be. You could just accept that your own actions and existence are the only kind of answers that will suffice.

The questions are traps because our human logic (the way we explain consistent cause and effect by observing phenomena) is not equipped to solve them. "When you have a hammer..." certainly applies here. It's like trying to use your eyesight to judge how many miles away the nearest mountaintop is, and arguing with the guy who says it's five miles when it looks more like three miles to you. JUST WALK THERE.

(And all this is coming from a guy who reads Heidegger and Sartre. I know how exciting it is to judge miles by eyesight, but I also have plenty of experience with futility.)

The idea is to resist the urge to shut yourself down, in regards to questions you are currently unable to answer. Forget about the questions, as well as their answers, and get on with being alive. By and by, answers come, and cancel out their questions. Finally, if you get it right, you find you no longer need questions, and so no longer need answers.